In the Cards

by Annie Campbell

My relationship with Yarnell fizzled and died without any regrets on either side, and
the daycare business got me through the rest of the winter. Now that it was spring,

I was happy to return to house painting.

I joined some old friends on a different paint crew. We usually ate lunch at Noyes Lodge: a big cafeteria on the Cornell Campus. During lunch one day, I was introduced to Ricky, an eccentric magician with devilish smiling eyes. He sat hunched over his food, complaining that life was “a beating” and that he had no place to live. He carried on a rapid discourse about life and magic while constantly flipping a quarter smoothly and expertly over and under his fingers. Sometimes the coin disappeared into thin air, sometimes he magically retrieved it behind my ear.

I imagined what fun it would be to have a magician around the house and said, “You can stay at my house if you don’t mind kids.”

“I hate kids,” Ricky cackled, “but I would love to stay there."

My brother john had gone off to the University of Wisconsin, so I had an extra room. Ricky moved in that night and put his few belongings in the small bedroom downstairs. Then he settled down on the mattress that served as a couch in the living room. We talked and I showed him the record collection that Leo had given me. I never knew why Leo had parted with his beloved records, but I was grateful to have them. Ricky, who knew a lot about music, went nuts over my fine R&B collection, and we spent some late nights listening to records.

Ricky the kid-hater and Storn really hit it off. He entertained Storn with card tricks and little windup toys – his “assistants,” he called them – which he used in some of magic tricks.

“I can do tricks too!” announced two-and-a-half year-old Storn. He flapped his small hands back and forth in front of his chest like a little door opening and closing while rapidly popping his tongue in and out, and blinking his sparkly blue eyes as fast as he could. Ricky beamed.

After a B.B. King concert in Cornell, Ricky and I talked to B.B.’s bass player. Ricky told him about my record collection, and even though it was late, invited him to our house. We stayed up for hours listening to old rhythm and blues records. I asked Ricky to do some tricks for Bass-man. Out came the cards and one of his windup toys – a frog. Ricky shuffled the cards, which was a show in itself. The cards cascaded like a waterfall, tumbling from one hand to the other. Quickly he squared the deck into neat pile. Bass-man watched transfixed, as the cards flew in a perfect arc from left hand to right, back and forth like an accordion.

“Here, pick a card, any card and show it to Annie but not to me,” said Ricky as he held out a perfect fan of equally spaced cards toward Bass-man. One card wiggled in and out of the fan, begging to be chosen. Bass-man regarded it suspiciously and refused to pick a card.

"OK, shuffle as many times as you like, " said Ricky, chuckling as he closed the fan and handed the deck to him.

Bass-man shuffled and cut the deck quite expertly, then showed me his chosen card, returned it to the deck, shuffeled again, and handed it back to Ricky. With one big sweep of his hand, Ricky made a perfect half circle with all the cards evenly spaced face down on the floor.

Ricky wound up the jumping frog assistant and placed it in the center of the semicircle. The three of us leaned forward on our wooden chairs and watched as the frog hopped here and there and finally landed on a card. Ricky picked up the card and showed it to us without looking at it himself.

“Is it your card?” he asked.

“No!” Bass-man said triumphantly. “It is NOT my card!”

Ricky feigned surprise. He placed the card face down on the center of the circle, took the Bass-man’s beer bottle, and gave the card a hard thunk with the bottom of the bottle.

“Well it’s your card now,” Ricky said.

Bass-man turned it over.

“Sur nuf it is, man!” he shouted, wild-eyed. “How the hell d’you do that? Bet you can’t do that again!”

The frog picked the right card two more times. Bass-man looked edgy.

“Okay man, lemme see you do that thing one more time!”

After the frog once again chose the correct card, Bass-man sprang from his chair so fast he knocked it over – and ran from our house laughing and shrieking ghoulishly.

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